‘That wasn’t true about him dying.’ She ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip as she concentrated. ‘He asked me to circulate the story of his death. Really, he and Katya…you’re not listening.’
‘I can listen and pour a drink at the same time.’
‘He went with this girl Katya who is so beautiful that it would hurt you to touch her…’
‘It wouldn’t hurt me to touch her.’
‘You must listen more seriously. They are living at an address that only I know. Even my mother thinks they are dead. They were in a train crash, you see…’
‘It’s a little early in the day for a train crash,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you take off your overcoat and relax?’
‘You don’t believe me.’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘I am your credulous court buffoon and I hang upon every syllable, but how about fixing a cup of coffee?’
When she brought the coffee—elegant little cups on an embroidered tray cloth—she knelt on the floor and put the cups upon the low coffee table. She was wearing a man’s sweater back to front, and under her hair—cut high and short now at the back—there was a triangle of white skin as soft and fresh as a newly broken bread-roll.
I fought down an impulse to kiss it. ‘You have a lovely trapezius,’ I said.
‘Have I? How nice.’ She said it automatically. She poured out the coffee and presented it to me like John the Baptist’s head. ‘I have a flat in New York,’ she said. ‘It’s much nicer than this. I spend a lot of time in New York.’
‘Really,’ I said.
‘Well, this flat’s not mine.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘When your old man and Katya come back…’
‘No, no, no.’
‘You’ll spill the coffee,’ I said.
‘You are just being nasty.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘If we are telling stories, we are telling stories. If we are not telling stories, we tell the truth.’
‘That’s a good arrangement.’
‘Do you think a woman should be able to smile with her eyes?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’
‘I think they should.’ She covered her mouth with her hand. ‘You tell me when I’m smiling just from watching my eyes.’
It’s not easy to describe Signe, for she left you with a memory out of all relation to her true appearance. She was strikingly pretty, but her features were not regular. Her nose was too small to balance her high flat cheekbones, and her mouth was made for a face at least two sizes larger. When she laughed and giggled it stretched from ear to ear, but half an hour after leaving her you found yourself remembering Harvey’s claim that she was the most beautiful girl in the world.
‘Now?’ she said.
‘Now what?’ I said.
‘Am I smiling with my eyes?’
‘To play this game fairly,’ I said, ‘you would need to have a hand that was bigger than your mouth.’
‘Stop it, you are spoiling it.’
‘Don’t hit me,’ I said. ‘You’re spilling my coffee.’
For two days Signe and I waited for Harvey Newbegin to return. We saw a gangster film of New York during which Signe kept saying, ‘That’s near where I live.’ We had dinner on top of a tall building in Tapiola and looked out across the ice-locked offshore islands. I almost learned to ski at the cost of a torn jacket and a twisted elbow.
On the evening of the second day we were back in the flat near Long Bridge. Signe had cooked a fish with a sloppy skill which enabled her to read a pulp magazine and prepare dinner simultaneously without having anything burn or boil over. When dinner was over she brought a plate of petit fours in silver wrappers and a bottle of schnapps.
‘Have you known Harvey a long time?’
‘I’ve seen him on and off over the years.’
‘He runs things here, you know.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Yes. He’s in sole charge in this part of Europe. He’s gone back to New York for a conference.’
‘So you said.’
‘I don’t think he’s the sort of man who is good at controlling a whole…’
‘Network?’
‘Yes, network. He’s too…emotional.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ She bit into one of the little cakes with her ice-white teeth. ‘He’s madly in love with me. Do you think that’s good?’
‘It’s OK as far as I’m concerned.’
‘He wants to marry me.’
I remembered all kinds of girls whom Harvey had wanted to marry at some time or other. ‘Well, you’re young yet. I imagine you’ll want to think about that for a little while.’
‘He’s going to divorce his present wife.’
‘He said that?’
‘No, his analyst told me at a party in New York.’ She folded the silver square of wrapping paper in half and made it into a little boat.
‘Then he’s going to marry you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘There are lots of men in love with me. I don’t think a girl should be rushed into bedding down.’
‘I think they should,’ I said.
‘You’re wicked.’ She put the little silver-paper boat on to her fingertip like a hat and wiggled it. ‘He’s wicked,’ she said to the finger, and the finger nodded. ‘Harvey’s wife is awful.’
‘You are probably a little biased.’
‘No, I’m not biased. I know her. We were all at a party at Mr Midwinter’s. You don’t know Mr Midwinter, do you?’
‘No.’
‘He’s a dear. You’ll meet him. He’s Harvey’s boss.’ She fingered a coffee mark on my shirt. ‘I’ll remove that before it stains. Give me the shirt. You can borrow one of Harvey’s.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘At this party everyone was wearing really pretty dresses. You know, with jewels and silver things in their hair and some really great shoes. All the women had really great shoes. Sort of that shape.’ She took off her shoe and put it on the table and modified it with her two index fingers. ‘You can get them in Helsinki now, but at that time…anyway I had only been in New York for a couple of days and I only had the clothes I had taken with me. You understand.’
‘Sure, it’s a real problem.’
‘No, it really is a problem if you are a woman. Men can have one dark suit and wear it all day and no one will even notice, but women are expected to have the right clothes for lunch and afternoon tea and working in and then have some stunning outfit for evening. Then next day people think you should have things they haven’t seen before. If you…’
‘You were telling me about a party.’
‘Yes. Well I’m telling you. I went to this party at Mr Midwinter’s and it’s a wonderful house with footmen and things, and I went in just the sort of clothes I’d wear for a party here in Helsinki. I mean just a friendly little party. So there in the middle of all these men in tuxedos and women in three-hundred-dollar dresses…’
‘Didn’t Harvey tell you what they would be wearing?’
‘No. You know what he’s like. He daren’t go near me when his wife’s around. Anyway I’m standing there like a creep. Creep?’
‘Creep, yes. That will do.’
‘Well I’m standing there like a creep in this dress with dots on it. Dots. Can you imagine?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mrs Newbegin comes over to me. She looks like that.’ Signe narrowed her eyes to slits and sucked her cheeks in a grotesque imitation of a girl in a fashion magazine. ‘She’s wearing a fabulous black silk sheath dress and satin shoes. Satin shoes. She looks me up and down and says, “I’m Mr Newbegin’s wife.” Mr Newbegin. She turns to her friend and says, “It’s just terrible that Harvey didn’t tell her it was formal. I’m sure she has a dozen really pretty little formals she could have worn.” She’s so patronizing you’ve no idea. She’s horrid.’ Signe produced a little box and began applying bri
ght green shadow to her eyelids. She finished, fluttered her lashes at me and smoothed the corduroy dress over her wide hips. She rested the side of her face against my legs. ‘She’s horrid,’ she repeated. ‘Terrible life she leads.’
‘She sounds a bit fierce,’ I said.
‘She’s a Leo; fire sign, sun sign. Lightning and domination. Pushing. It’s a masculine sign of driving force. Men Leos are OK, but women Leos tend to push their husbands. Harvey Newbegin is the same sign as me: Gemini. Air. Mercury. Split twins, passionate, dramatic, vicious, intelligent. Lots of movement, darting around to avoid trouble. Terrible with Leo. Geminis and Leos have an evasive relationship. It’s a bad combination.’
‘But you get on well with Harvey?’
‘Wonderfully. You’ve got nice brown arms. You’re an Aquarian.’
‘Have they all got brown arms?’
‘Air sign. Spirit and mystery. Always keep a part of themselves back. They have a high wall around them, more profound than most people, more detached and scientific. It’s my favourite sign, goes well with Gemini.’ She grasped my arm to demonstrate. Her fingers were slim and feather-like. She ran them down my arm lightly enough to make me shiver. She picked up my hand, put my fingertips into her open mouth, twisted my hand and kissed my palm noisily.
‘Do you like that?’ I didn’t answer.
She grinned and dropped my hand.
‘When I get married I’m going to keep my name. What’s your name? I never can remember.’
‘Dempsey,’ I said.
‘Well if I married you I would want to have the name Signe Laine-Dempsey.’
‘You were just about to tell me what sort of terrible life Mrs Newbegin has.’
Signe pulled a face of distaste. ‘Businessmen. Horrid wives talking about their husband’s cars. Big business, you know. It’s the women I hate, I quite like older men.’
‘Well, that gives me a chance,’ I said. ‘I’m old enough to be your father.’
‘You are not old enough to be my father,’ she said while tracing a pattern with her thumbnail into the knee of my trousers.
‘Don’t do that, there’s a good girl.’
‘Why?’
‘Well this is one of my better suits for one thing.’
‘And also it’s rather disturbing?’
‘Yes and also it’s rather disturbing.’
‘There you are: Geminis do affect Aquarians.’
‘I am old enough to be your father,’ I said to myself as much as to her.
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that. I’m nearly eighteen.’
‘Well in September eighteen and a half years ago,’ I thought for a moment, ‘I had just finished my exams. I went to Ipswich for a holiday. There was a company of ATS girls billeted in the same street.’ I paused to think hard. ‘Is your mother a blonde ATS girl with a mole on her right shoulder and a slight lisp?’
Signe giggled. ‘Yes. I swear it’s true.’
She lifted my vest at the back of my trousers. ‘You have a very nice back,’ she said. She ran a finger along the vertebrae appreciatively. ‘A very nice back. That’s important in a man.’
‘I thought you were going to remove that spot from my shirt,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m sitting here in my vest, remember?’
‘A very nice back,’ she said. ‘I should know, after all my father was one of the most famous osteopaths in the whole of Sweden.’
‘It’s a good shirt,’ I said. ‘You needn’t wash it, leave it to soak.’
‘Until he was called to set a bone in the back of the Queen of Denmark,’ she said. ‘That’s how it all began.’
She squirmed against me and suddenly we were kissing. Her mouth was clumsy and awkward like a child’s good night, and when she spoke the words vibrated inside my mouth. ‘Passionate, dramatic and vicious,’ she said. ‘Gemini and Aquarius are good in conjunction.’ She was still kissing me and kneading my leg skilfully.
‘Oh well,’ I thought. ‘I might as well see if there’s anything in this astrology lark.’
Chapter 9
Harvey flew in the next day. We went out to meet him at the airport and Signe hugged him and told him how much she’d missed him and how she had cooked all his favourite foods for one vast homecoming meal but she had had an urgent phone call about sickness in the family and the dinner had all burned up so now we must eat in a restaurant.
The story about the dinner was a fantasy, but I envied Harvey his welcome just the same. She ran across the airport like a newly born antelope unsteady on its legs, and stood with elbows bent and legs apart as though afraid of toppling through her fantasies into womanhood.
The first thing I did was tell Harvey that the eggs and all my baggage had been stolen at the airport, but Harvey Newbegin was in one of his rich-busyman moods and went bustling around making tutting noises for a couple of days. He took the idea of the package being stolen with studied anger and said the people concerned ‘really took a flyer. It was booby-trapped like crazy.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That would have been nice if the customs had asked me to open it.’
Harvey gave me a heavy-lidded glance. ‘Customs were fixed.’
Then he slammed off into his office. Any room into which Harvey put his typewriter he called his office.
Harvey spent a lot of time in the office and apart from asking me if I’d spoken to Dawlish—a suggestion which I impassively denied—he didn’t say much to me until the morning of the third day, which was a Tuesday. Harvey took me out to a sauna club he belonged to. It was a short drive from the city. Harvey had always had a mania for showers and baths and he had taken to the sauna ritual with great enthusiasm. This club was on a small island off the coast; it was reached by a causeway. There was little to show that we were on an island, for the snow covered everything from horizon to horizon. The clubhouse was tucked into a line of fir trees, a low building rich with the reds and browns of natural wood. The snow made horizontal lines of white where it had lodged between the timbers.
We undressed and walked right through the shiny white-tiled shower room where a woman attendant was scrubbing someone with a loofah. Harvey opened a heavy door. ‘This is the smoke room,’ Harvey said. ‘Typically Finnish.’
‘Good,’ I said. I don’t know why I said that.
Inside it was the size and shape of a cattle truck. Two slotted benches occupied most of the space and they were high up so that you had to sit with neck bent or smash your head against the ceiling. All the inside surfaces were wood, the fire smoke had blackened them and the heat produced a rich resinous smell of burning pine.
We sat on the bench looking out of the window that was the size of a very large letter-box. The thermometer was reading over 100° Centigrade, but Harvey had fiddled with the stove and said it would get hot in a moment. ‘That’s nice,’ I said. I felt as if someone was pressing my lungs with a steam-iron. Through the double glazing the trees were heavy with snow, and when the wind blew handfuls of it away it looked as though the trees were breathing on the cold air.
Harvey said, ‘You’ve got to understand that we are a very special little outfit. That’s why I wanted to make sure that you didn’t say anything about it to Dawlish.’
I nodded.
‘You didn’t say anything to him. On your honour?’
What a strange medieval mind you have, I thought. ‘On your honour’ is calculated to make me break down and confess.
‘On my honour,’ I said.
‘Good,’ said Harvey. ‘Because New York were giving me hell about employing you and I’ve gone out on a limb. You see, we have a special operation coming our way tomorrow.’
It was getting very hot in the room. Even Harvey—who had a dark complexion—had gone the colour of a boiled lobster. Outside in the snow two men had climbed out of a Renault van with saws and ropes and were tapping one of the trees.
‘I didn’t want to handle it,’ Harvey said. ‘Are you getting too hot?’
‘No, I’
m fine. Why didn’t you?’
‘Wrong time of year for one thing.’ He smacked his legs with a birch branch. The smell of the leaves was suddenly very strong. I wondered how they preserved branches complete with leaves until this time of year. ‘Oh, there are a thousand reasons why I wanted them to wait.’
‘They wouldn’t?’
‘They have their reasons. They want him in and out within a month at the very outside. He’s a technician taking a look at some technical stuff. Machinery or something. It’s Pike’s brother: you met him?’
‘I see,’ I said. I didn’t see anything except a man tying a rope around the large upper branch of a tree.
‘It’s dangerous,’ Harvey said. Even Harvey was feeling a little discomfort now. He was sitting very still and his breathing was shallow.
‘In what way?’
‘These drops. I hate them.’
‘Drops?’ I said. I had a nasty little feeling in my inside that was nothing to do with the sauna. I hoped very much that Harvey didn’t mean what I thought he might. He stood up and went across to the stove. I watched him dip into a bucket and throw a scoopful of water on to the hot stones of the fire. He looked up at me. ‘Drop from a plane,’ he said.
‘Parachute into the Soviet Union?’ The man at the base of the tree had begun to operate the electric felling-saw even before the other one began to descend.
‘They don’t use a ’chute. They drop them from a light plane into snowdrifts.’
‘You had me worried for a minute.’
‘I’m not kidding. I’m serious,’ Harvey said, and I could see that he was.
The bottom end of the rope was fixed to the back of the van and it took up the slack and held the tree in tension to give the saw ease of movement. Suddenly I felt the change of temperature. A thousand pinpricks of scalding steam grew to knife-points and the knives twisted. I opened my mouth and felt the scalds on the mucous membrane inside my throat. I closed my mouth and felt as though I had gargled with barbed wire. Harvey watched me closely. He said, ‘It’s only fifty miles to the coast of the USSR. If we went high enough to use a ’chute we’d be picked up on radar immediately after taking off.’